Eric Trautmann's Morris County NJ Brokerage Blog

Looking UP

2008-07-11T07:15:21Z

Business is looking up. Everyone is finally realizing that the NAR commercials stating that now is a great time to buy are true. Interest rates can not go any lower, if the fed lowers the prime rate any lower forget about home buyers worry about depression. I have shown homes to some of my first time buyers that have shown price increases and two of my home buyer clients have been involved in bidding the past month. My family owns a moving company that is a long established local mom and pop business. When I was still in school in the 80s it was a hot business to start (my parents started oursin the 60s) and many people started them up. When the economy hit a downturn and the industry tanked many of these part time or new movers left the industry. I think our brokerages will experience the same thing during this downturn. Many of our new Realtors or part time real estate agents who came in during the peak will be leaving the industry now. I actually had a half dozen people in my class to first get my real estate license who just wanted to sell their own house and that was it. So, when the end of this season comes and it continues to pick up we will have more business and less real estate agents so those of us who are working full time at real estate will reap the benefits.

Grand Opening

2008-07-05T10:49:15Z

From Left Alan our mortgage rep for the office, Wes a friend who we hope to have join the office, Doug ..my assistant and receptionist,me, Joe (Town Alderman, Mary (my wife and co-owner) Bill Peer one of our agents. After the ribbon cutting we went to the golf course and had the First Annual Exit Open Golf Outing. It was great and we recruited two agents at the course!

Independence Day

2008-07-04T21:19:51Z

So July 4th has many meanings to all of us. It stands for the ideals and belief systems our country was founded on and acts as a reminder of what cost those beliefs and our freedom came to. I would take this time to thank all of our troops past, present and future for all they have done and what they will continue to do. Independence day has a deep meaning to my brokerage and to your brokerage beyond the patriotic and symbolic portions. When you go to a family members or friends BBQ this weekend look around and think about it, we sell the brick and mortar and the sticks and nails sure but we sell the lifestyle more. So while it is a day to remember and rededicates ourselves to our land we need to redeicated ourselves to our home sellors and buyers.

Update

2008-06-22T21:58:01Z

Hello all,

Just wanted to update everyone who has sent emails and cards etc for Dakotas speedy and complete recovery, first thank you! Second, he is doing well and has taken some steps with a walker. He has dealt with some infections and still can not speak. Please keep him in your prayers.

Grand Opening

2008-06-22T20:37:41Z

So I thought things would calm down a bit now that we had the brokerage open and had some homes moving. Boy, was I wrong! Planning a grand opening is quite a bit of work. We are hosting a gold outing in conjunction with our open house and ribbon cutting. I have made all of the arrangements but forgot to call the mayors office so I have to do that ASAP tomorrow. We ordered all of our giveaways and have our shirts for the staff. Other than the mayor to cut the ribbon (oh gotta go to party city and buy ribbon too!) we are all done....I hope.

Support Needed for a Sick Little Boy

2008-05-30T22:56:01Z

Today we are going to not talk about real estate or money but what is realy important....family. I am the director of coaching for the youth lacrosse program of Jefferson Township , New Jersey. One of my young men who I have coached has had a very serious health issue. He is and will be again a very active and bright young man who is twelve years old. He ended up having a headache after a recent game he played in. Turns out his headache was a brain tumor. He has had succsesful brain surgery and the tumor was found to be benign. Due to the fact that the tumor was on his brain stem he has swelling of his nerves and has lost many functions, like eating, swallowing, and speaking. He has a great chance to come back from this and when we visited him the other day he was awake and aware of us and could communicate through gestures and with his eyes somewhat but he is a very scared little boy and could use all of your prayers and best wishes. I will also be cooking a roast beef fundraiser for his family as their insurance will cover only fifty percent of the costs. Anyone who would liketo buy a ticket please email me at bige11378@yahoo.com and include roast beef dinner as subject. Also, if anyone would like to send a get well card to Dakota (our 12 year old player) please forward them to my office at 211 myrtle avenue boonton, nj 07005. Please do say a prayer for Dakota and his speedy and complete recovery.

When is Too Much, Too Much?

2008-04-29T09:46:35Z

Our job is to sell houses and homes. How do we do this? By getting as many people in the door as possible to view the home. (Of course in the lux and high end markets or niche markets this is not the model). Technology will help you with this imensly but some tech tools may actualy hurt you in your home selling endevours. How so do you ask? Well if you have a nice house with great curb appeal but maybe a lousy floor plan. If you put virtual tours up you may not get the home buyer in to view who may have otherwise came on a tour of the home and fell in love with the house. So you need to plan your marketing plan for every listing. A set plan is ok but we need to be able to deviate when the time or situation calls for it. The clients of our brokerage have their own feel for a house and they may see something in person different than we do. Remember our job is too have the front door open and get bodies through it.

Hiding In Plain Sight

2008-04-29T09:34:34Z

Where is the best place to advertise? In plain sight is what I say. Some of us hide in plain sight and some of us shine in the sun, what is the difference and how do we achieve one and avoid the other? I think it is entirely up to you and your area but having a web presence that is professional is the first place to start , you do not have to be a computer engineer and have a second life avatar but a nicely formated and user friendly web site is at least a start. I also think the Saturday and Sunday papers are very important, we all can picture the couple that are first time home buyers having coffee and circling the houses to view that day. They do not have to buy the house you have advertised they just have to BUY YOU! The best but most forgotten place to advertise and to shine in the sun instaed of HIDING IN PLAIN SIGHT is in our daily lives. Wear a name badge , have car magents or get your car wrapped, dress professionaly, and try to give out at least ten business cards a day! If you are not going through multiple thousands of business cards every year then you are not trying hard enough. Remember, you sell yourself first and houses second. Real Estate Brokerage is a people business.

To Tell or Not To Tell

2008-04-24T13:32:39Z

So I have a contract in on a short sale in my county. My client likes two houses on this particular street the one we put the contract in on and the one right next door. They both are nice. I received a call today from the firm handling the short sale for the home owner(we have two realtors on their side, the bank and now the short sale company plus me the closing table will be packed) and they informed that there are a few issues with the house one being the septic but the other being that a young high school girl was murdered and dismembered in the house! When they lead off with the septic needing to be replaced and then say the BIG issue is next youy know you have some problems. So my client is negotiating. It brings up an interesting point should we be forced as realtors to disclose material facts like this in a listing? It does harm the home sellor if we do but it will protect people from buying a murder/crime scene home. It will also protect us from any and all issues with the house sale later. If the deal goes through we will be donating the commision to the scholarship that has been created in the young girls name.

Tech 101-Part B

2008-04-24T09:23:48Z

So someone asked what I use a portable DVD player for. Well, the first and easiest one is thta I have some promotional videos that I play for my home sellors when I am at a listing appoinment. I also will make up a loop of properties that will play or a highlight slide show for my open houses and play it during the showings. The best use of it is for the young home buyers or first time buyers who have kids. Slap in a shrek video and let them watch it and let mommy and daddy sign up to buy that house! Who do you think the home buyers will want to use and agent who thinks of everything and keeps their kids amused or one who just lets the kids run wild and they feel distrcted while viewing a new home? You look like a super agent with little tricks like these!

Which Way Did He Go George,Which Way?

2008-04-24T09:17:44Z

We have all sounded like a cartoon character at one time or another when driving home buyers around. A few times a year I seem to get clients who are looking for a new home that is not in my normal marketplace for my brokerage. The technology to help with this is of course a GPS unit, I live and die by it. There is nothing more embaressing than having to stop for directions or getting lost when showing a first time buyer some homes. You are supposed to be the expert and here you are stumbling around lost!I use my GPS everytime I go out, and it has only let me down twice once for a paper road and the other because of construction that kept forcing us back and forth to the same road block, till we ended up just walking to the house from the corner. I needed the excersize anyway.

SHHHHhhhh....Were Hunting Houses

2008-04-12T10:45:11Z

I am sitting here watching house hunters and when we guess which house the home buyers will pick I seem to always pick the right one. It seems I must have learned a little bit about working with home buyers. Now, back to our brokerage tech toys. Most of us have smart phones or PDAs by now I would hope. The ease of being able to look up MLS info on the fly while driving with home buyers is a great opportunity to showcase that we are well trained knowedgable real estate agents. 800 numbers are great for marketing and developing new business. Most 800 numbers you purchase come with systems that allow you to capture and track where potential buyers ar calling you from. This is a two fold program, it helps you sell your home ellor clients on using you to list their home and you will be able to track and follow up with home buyers who are looking in the proper price range.

A House is A House ,Unless of Course.....

2008-04-09T20:10:03Z

A House is A House Unless of Course It Is A Talking House ..... read that to the tune of the Mr. Ed show. Whether talking House works to help show and sell a house is up to debate,it has sold one house for me. The best part of Talking House is that the clients like it and want a real estate agent who is trained and uses technology. Technology is an aid to selling houses to our brokerage but it does not handle the sales process that is our job. Technology keeps us on the cutting edge of our profession and enables us to give our home sellors and home buyers up to the minute advice and information.

This Isnt your grandfathers Real estate anymore!

2008-04-09T09:20:33Z

I make use of every technological device and support that I can. Todays home buyer and home sellors demand to have instant gratification and knowledge. As realtors we have to be on the cutting edge of this. I purchased the Talking House Program from Broadcast Marketing for my new Brokerage and I offer it to all of my home selling clients. I also will offer it to any FSBOs in my area to help them sell their house on their own,if they end wanting to use an agent then I am well placed to be that agent. I will add some more tech tools later but just a short list are laptop(wifi capable), PDA, portable printer, cell phone or smart phone, sonic measuring tape, portable DVD player, talking house, web cams, web sites, blogs, 800 lines, this isnt your grandfathers real estate brokerage anymore!

A Blind Date

2008-04-08T21:46:41Z

DATE MY HOUSE, that is going to be the headline for my brokerage ad in the newspaper for my open house. I spoke to one of my home sellor clients and she agreed to let us try a Home owner blind date. I have arranged to allow one young first time home buyer couple to look into spending the day and night at this home. We will provide dinner etc. I am looking forward to setting this up and see where it goes. We are going to pair this up with another marketing program I have learned to use....bridal shows. More on this later.

Man Was Meant to be a Social Creature...but it is SOOO Hard Sometimes!

2008-04-03T10:17:45Z

Social Networking is the key to the next generation of marketing. You heard it here second,we spend so much money on mailings,cards, gifts and web sites and now we have the advent of social networking. A site like ActiveRain is a huge help in getting your name out there but more so what you write and how you write it...even your pictures give someone a feel for who you are and what you are about. A buyer client or home sellor has to feel comfortable with their real estate agent before they give them the new business. Today the first impresssion happens when they do an online search or just stumble across you on tthe internet. I love my calendars and postcards but they are passive marketing,knocking on doors or making calls is agressive marketing,Blogging and social networking is voyeristic marketing which is a hybrid of the two. I think I may have just coined a new phrase,voyeristic marketing......I wonder if I can patent that.

A Spherical Body at rest........you know the Rest

2008-04-01T11:44:20Z

Your Sphere of Influence is the single most important aspect of you business. As one great mind once said (and I paraphrase) "a sphere at rest tends to stay at rest", well if you let your sphere stay dormant and do not touch base and just say hello every once in a while you might as well close up shop and not work as a real estate agent or run a brokerage. When you do call a friend or former client(hopefully they all become friends) start off with business then go into personal. This way you get the dry, business inpersonal part of the conversation over with and then you move onto the nice pleasent portion of the sales call. (Which is what it is) When you hang up you have left them with a nice idea of you and a personal feeling and touch. It is about the contacts and staying in front of people and on their minds! DO NOT FORGET TO DOCUMENT ALL CONTACTS SO YOU CAN REFER BACK LATER. If they have a kid playing baseball (or whatever)you can ask how the season turned out etc, people love to think you are listening and genuinily interested in them.

It's A Small World

2008-03-31T09:59:24Z

I am busy today trying to finish up some client work and getting through some loans for some personal business, but I thought I would share some insights on buyers. I had a client call me to see a property in a local town listed by a different office of the same franchise (EXIT REALTY) as my brokerage. She said that she had called the listing agent 10 times and had no timely responses at all. So I took her out to see the property and she made an offer on the house. We are currently waiting for bank approval,it is a forclosure. I have a new client and will possibly have made a commision check because of another lazy agent. Return those calls realtors!

When she called me I said sure I can show you the house, we set an appoinment to meet at my office, we sat and spoke for a few minutes, we signed a buyer agreement andspoke to a mortgage broker. I also told her to bring her checkbook to the meeting. If no traing or hints get through to ay new agents it is this...when working with a buyer tell them to bring their checkbook when going out to look at houses. If they say no they are not ready to make an offer yet then DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME. We do not work at DIsney World and this is not a small world, gas is too expensive to be an unpaid tour guide.

What a Tangled Web ...Site we Weave

2008-03-26T12:45:11Z

So today I decided to update and fix my website. The site was set as an agent site to market me the real estate salesperson not me the real estate brokerage and its broker of record. So I decided it needed to be less about me and more about the company and needed to help recruit agents to the office. As an owner that is the way it has to be but I agonized over the loss of the marketing materials that I have developed over the last few years to help me earn listings and buyers. So I started doing the updates and realized I can make my realtor site very basic and vanilla for now but I need to hire a web development company or consultant to perform this task as it is something that is costing me money by doing it on my own. My job is to recruit new agents to my office and list and sell homes for my clients and counsel my buyers. So advice for today is not to get tangled up in your own web let someone else weave while you go out and perform functions that actualy will produce a paycheck.

Hooking Up....with a House?

2008-03-22T23:38:06Z

I spend too much time watching HGTV,TLC and Flip This House shows ,watching other brokers and salepersons trying to sell homes.but a new one is coming out this April 5th on TLC that seems to be a great idea for all of us. It is a hard time to sell houses sometimes now so this realtor is setting up house hookups. He sets up sleep overs for possible home buyers to try out the house and see if they like it. How great of a marketing and sales concept is that think that might set your real estate brokerage apart?? I will be implementing this for all of my (vacant, investment )properties. We know that if we get them talking about a house and saying yes then we will sell them a house but can you imagibe getting them to spend a night in it, you can write that contract over breakfast! I LOVE THIS IDEA, I just wish I could take credit for it.

Nothing Catchy.....well almost nothing

2008-03-22T22:49:13Z

Nothing catchy or any business plans, traing, brokerage classes or tips for this post just a wish for a HAPPY and HEALTHY EASTER HOLIDAY to ALL OF YOU!

well maybe some ideas as this is a time of peace, rebirth and growth in our spiritual lives so too should it be for our professional lives. I will go out on a limb to all of you and say that this will be a great spring market as long as we make it that way!

Chicken Little the Realtor

2008-03-21T10:57:44Z

Schedules and staying fixed on them are so important to todays world and it is the only way to make any money and be succsessful in the real estate industry. Without setting up a schedule for yourself you will miss out on accomplishing tasks that are profit generating.I have set up a calendar of tasks for myself that I am having issues with sticking to so I will constantly change it when need be, but I have a goal list and a task list that must be accomplished each week. For example I must make so many FSBO calls each week and so many recruiting calls each week, so I set aside time on certain days every week to make those calls, but some times you find that it is more productive to make those calls at a different time, that is ok to tinker with your schedule but you HAVE to hold yourself accountable for performing those tasks that will get you to the goals that you have set. If you ask the average agent in our business if they have a business plan or have set goals for this year they will say yes then if you delve deeper you will find it is not a formalized , written plan. If you want to achieve it you must first conceive it,. in other words sit down and write down what you want and what you need to do to get there. I am presently reformulating my goals upwards and restructuring my schedule and weekly tasks as I need to have more flexibility later in the week so my week will be front heavy with calls. Sorry about the soap box rant but in speaking to agents this week they all seem to be out there just floating with no direction or worse yet running around yelling the sky is falling the sky is falling. This business is an industry and should be worked that way not as a part time hobby.

Sign of the Times or I'mmmm Back!

2008-03-17T21:41:09Z

Well, it has been a long while since my last post and I appologize I have just been so busy getting the office up to speed and actualy conducting real estate business. I sold two houses last week and listed one, and they all were direct results of opening my own office, well mine and my wife's. The Teal and Maroon logo of EXIT REALTY has realy made a difference in people seeing my signs they are very visible. So visible that I noticed that someone stole four of my directional signs over this weekend! I now use zip ties on my directions so kids walking by can not rip the sign off of the stakes, I also try to zip tie my signs to street signs or fences when possible so kids , cars or other real estate agents can not remove them for me. That is the helpful hint for the day. My brother started reading this blog and asked me why I had not written anything in a while and I had exscuses but none of them realy any good, I was just too busy and did not have myself on a schedule so I have decided to schedule in some blogging time each week and hopefully everyday.Having a scheduled routine is extremely important in our business for prospecting for new clients and also for keeping the lines of communication open with present and past clients. I try to call all of my present clients every Tuesday in the morning so that even if nothing is going on they know they will hear from me with an update. This week it will be difficult to do this as one of my buyers is in Nicaraugau visiting his brother and checking on some family investment property, the difficult part is that he just went into attorney review today so we may have to overnight some things down for his signature. We are supposed to close in thirty days, oh well if it was all easy cash deals no one would need me.

HURRY UP and WAIT!

2008-01-29T21:37:14Z

So today I heard from the Real Estate Commision and they informed me that my broker and brokerage license is ready....but I am not. So I drove down to Trenton to see what can be done, and I could slow it down for a month if I wanted I would just have to resubmit everything. So we have decided to open our office officialy on February 5th. While there I was supposed to speak to the education and training department of the real estate group to see if they would waive time and education requirements for my brothers who happen to be lawyers. They will waive the training requirements but only to be a real estate salesperson not to be a broker. A lawyer will still need to be realtor associate for three years before they can apply to take the brokers exam. It is a case of Hurry up and wait...then hurry up! It will feel good to get going but it is also very daunting that it is all real now. I actualy need to make this work now. As plus I can start converting those FSBOs and get some agents ina nd get rocking and rolling with my office. I am looking forwad to it. So we have a lot to discuss on what got us to this point and I am too exhausted tonight to make a full post so I will wait till tomorrow, but wish us LUCK!

A Picture is worth a Thousand WORDS

2008-01-29T21:29:50Z